Konflit medzi elitami a populistami v Strednej Europe

"On the same day that Fico formed his government, the Slovak constitutional court announced that a Slovak citizen had filed a suit demanding that the court annul the results of the election. The claimant declared that the Slovakian Republic had failed to create a "normal" system of elections and had therefore violated Slovak citizens' constitutional right to be governed wisely. In the eyes of the claimant, any electoral system that could bring to power as motley a crew as the new Slovak government could not be called "normal".

The lone Slovak claimant had a point. The right to be governed wisely can contradict the right to vote. This is traditionally what makes liberals nervous about democracy. One might almost say that the Slovak citizen was a reincarnation of the influential nineteenth-century liberal François Guizot (1787-1874).

It was Guizot and his colleagues, "the doctrinaires", who used all their eloquence to argue that democracy and good governance can coexist only under a regime of limited suffrage. In their view, the real sovereign is not the people but reason. Thus, voting should be discussed in terms of capacities rather than rights. In the nineteenth century, capacity was translated as property or education; only those with the right education or enough property could be trusted with the power to vote. Today, nobody would dare to argue for restricting voting rights."

Povodne precitane: SME Forum 11/11/2007

Cely clanok od Ivana Krasteva sa da precitat tu.

Poznamka na okraj - liberalizmus sa tu chape v jeho klasickom vyzname.